The present invention relates to production of lead-acid batteries and more particularily to a method and apparatus for automatically installing a cover on a container, or jar, containing a group comprising elements of a cell of an industrial lead-acid battery.
In the past, the covers have been installed on the jars manually, a procedure which is time consuming, mistake prone and which has become increasingly expensive. A typical manual operation involves straightening the terminal posts of the group contained within the jar by banging them with a mallet. This procedure was performed to more or less insure that each terminal post would slide through its respective bushing which had been previously molded into the cover.
The cover was then placed over the terminal posts and forced into the top of the jar again using a mallet. This operation was especially time consuming and mistake prone since different portions of the cover had to be struck by the mallet to ensure that the cover was installed with its top surface substantially level with respect to the top of the jar and at a predetermined height thereabove.
This was followed by pouring an asphalt like compound into a grove formed around the perimeter of the cover, the grove being formed by the contour of the cover in conjunction with the inner top surfaces of the jar. Once the compound substantially cooled and hardened, the terminal posts were then welded to the bushings by using a hand torch. This is another operation, the quality of which depends greatly on the skill of the person performing the function. Upon completion of the terminal post welding operation, the jars were sent off for further assembly operations. As a result, defects in the industrial battery cell resulting from the cover sealing operation were not discovered until much later in the assembly cycle and possibly not until the battery was delivered and in use.